Counterfeit or re-marked Electronic components.

[[email protected]]

Our end customer is seeing failures of a intersil 82c87 Octal inverting
transceiver which is behaving like a non inverting transceiver (82c86).
We have opened up the component and the die is marked 82C86. The part
may have been rebadged or is counterfeit. Has anyone else encountered
this or can recommend a way of detecting counterfeit components?

Mark T

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

Our end customer is seeing failures of a intersil 82c87 Octal inverting
transceiver which is behaving like a non inverting transceiver (82c86).
We have opened up the component and the die is marked 82C86. The part
may have been rebadged or is counterfeit. Has anyone else encountered
this or can recommend a way of detecting counterfeit components?

Mark T

Buy only from franchised distributors?

There's lots of that kind of stuff around in Asia. Sometimes it might
find its way into gray market sellers elsewhere. Sometimes the
packaging provides clues (bad printing etc.).


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[[email protected]]

Our end customer is seeing failures of a intersil 82c87 Octal inverting
transceiver which is behaving like a non inverting transceiver (82c86).
We have opened up the component and the die is marked 82C86. The part
may have been rebadged or is counterfeit. Has anyone else encountered
this or can recommend a way of detecting counterfeit components?

Where did the customer get the chip ..? (asia?)

Search the archives for this group. This issue had a long discussion before.

 

[Jim]

Our end customer is seeing failures of a intersil 82c87 Octal inverting
transceiver which is behaving like a non inverting transceiver (82c86).
We have opened up the component and the die is marked 82C86. The part
may have been rebadged or is counterfeit. Has anyone else encountered
this or can recommend a way of detecting counterfeit components?

Yes, my company has been caught by mis-marked ICs before. It was
purchased from a regular distributor who had stock. This distributor has a
good reputation, but it turned out their supplier, well.......

Anyway, this was an IC which was an old version if the CPU, and the part
number had been relabelled.

Now, if we have ANY doubt, we test one of whatever part it may be before
using in production.

Jim

--

10:05 Pacific Time Zone
Jun 18 2006

International Time
17:05 UTC
18.06.2006

 

[[email protected]]

Yes, my company has been caught by mis-marked ICs before. It was

purchased from a regular distributor who had stock. This distributor has a
good reputation, but it turned out their supplier, well.......

Good distributor should screen things like this. Otoh, it may be hard for them
to spot bad components aswell.

Anyway, this was an IC which was an old version if the CPU, and the part
number had been relabelled.

Now, if we have ANY doubt, we test one of whatever part it may be before
using in production.

Maybe a small x-ray equipment could be used to look inside to find the
conterfeit components .. ?
Kind like X-ray -> computerized image comparision.

(any ideas for suitable X-ray source?)

 

[[email protected]]

Good distributor should screen things like this. Otoh, it may be hard for them
to spot bad components aswell.



Maybe a small x-ray equipment could be used to look inside to find the
conterfeit components .. ?
Kind like X-ray -> computerized image comparision.

(any ideas for suitable X-ray source?)

You'd need a very small X-ray source. The usual way of looking at this
sort of stuff is with a electron microscope.

Obviously you have to de-encapsulate the package first. When this sort
of work was part of my job, (1982-1991) the sort of optical microscope
you needed to be able to read the lettering on the chip cost about as
much as an electron microscope - of the order of $50,000. Everything
has come on a bit since then and an optical microscope probably
wouldn't hack it.

As far as I know, conventional X-ray sources don't get remotely near
small enough to let you do this kind of fine imaging.

 

[[email protected]]

You'd need a very small X-ray source. The usual way of looking at this

sort of stuff is with a electron microscope.

Obviously you have to de-encapsulate the package first. When this sort
of work was part of my job, (1982-1991) the sort of optical microscope
you needed to be able to read the lettering on the chip cost about as
much as an electron microscope - of the order of $50,000. Everything
has come on a bit since then and an optical microscope probably
wouldn't hack it.

As far as I know, conventional X-ray sources don't get remotely near
small enough to let you do this kind of fine imaging.

Do you really need to read the lettering?
Chip layout should tell some. Those conterfeit I have seen was so gross you
couldn't miss it with a bare eye once the package was opened.